Question

1.What role does quality play in the IT project methodology?

2.The text discusses a number of quality gurus. Choose one of these individuals and describe the cultural environment in which he developed his contribution and then explain the significance of their contribution to IT project quality management.

3.The Capacity Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)/ posits five levels of organizational maturity that are a function of the nature of their processes. Describe how processes mature from the lowest to the highest level.

4.Compare and contrast validation and verification. What is the role

of each and how do they differ?

Answer 1

1)

Project quality management is all of the processes and activities needed to determine and achieve project quality.At its most basic level, quality means meeting the needs of customers. This is also known as "fit for use."

As the project manager, there are three key quality management concepts that will help you deliver a high quality project...

• Customer Satisfaction
• Prevention over Inspection
• Continuous Improvement

Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a key measure of a project's quality. It's important to keep in mind that project quality management is concerned with both the product of the project and the management of the project.

If the customer doesn't feel the product produced by the project meets their needs or if the way the project was run didn't meet their expectations, then the customer is very likely to consider the project quality as poor, regardless of what the project manager or team thinks.

As a result, not only is it important to make sure the project requirements are met, managing customer expectations is also a critical activity that you need to handle well for your project to succeed.

Prevention over Inspection

The Cost of Quality (COQ) includes money spent during the project to avoid failures and money spent during and after the project because of failures. These are known as the Cost of Conformance and the Cost of Nonconformance.

Plan Quality

Plan Quality involves identifying the quality requirements for both the project and the product and documenting how the project can show it is meeting the quality requirements. The outputs of this process include a Quality Management Plan, quality metrics, quality checklists and a Process Improvement Plan.

Perform Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance is used to verify that the project processes are sufficient so that if they are being adhered to the project deliverables will be of good quality. Process checklists and project audits are two methods used for project quality assurance.

Perform Quality Control

Quality Control verifies that the product meets the quality requirements.Peer reviews and testing are two methods used to perform quality control. The results will determine if corrective action is needed.

2)

A guru, by definition, is a good person, a wise person and a teacher. A quality guru should be all of these, plus have a concept and approach to quality within business that has made a major and lasting impact. The gurus mentioned in this section have done, and continue to do, that, in some cases, even after their death.

3)

A maturity level is a well-defined evolutionary plateau toward achieving a mature software process. Each maturity level provides a layer in the foundation for continuous process improvement.

In CMMI models with a staged representation, there are five maturity levels designated by the numbers 1 through 5

1. Initial
2. Managed
3. Defined
4. Quantitatively Managed
5. Optimizing

Maturity Level Details:

Maturity levels consist of a predefined set of process areas. The maturity levels are measured by the achievement of the specific and generic goals that apply to each predefined set of process areas. The following sections describe the characteristics of each maturity level in detail.

Maturity Level 1 - Initial

At maturity level 1, processes are usually ad hoc and chaotic. The organization usually does not provide a stable environment. Success in these organizations depends on the competence and heroics of the people in the organization and not on the use of proven processes.

Maturity level 1 organizations often produce products and services that work; however, they frequently exceed the budget and schedule of their projects.

Maturity level 1 organizations are characterized by a tendency to over commit, abandon processes in the time of crisis, and not be able to repeat their past successes.

Maturity Level 2 - Managed

At maturity level 2, an organization has achieved all the specific and generic goals of the maturity level 2 process areas. In other words, the projects of the organization have ensured that requirements are managed and that processes are planned, performed, measured, and controlled.

The process discipline reflected by maturity level 2 helps to ensure that existing practices are retained during times of stress. When these practices are in place, projects are performed and managed according to their documented plans.

At maturity level 2, requirements, processes, work products, and services are managed. The status of the work products and the delivery of services are visible to management at defined points.

Commitments are established among relevant stakeholders and are revised as needed. Work products are reviewed with stakeholders and are controlled.

The work products and services satisfy their specified requirements, standards, and objectives.

Maturity Level 3 - Defined

At maturity level 3, an organization has achieved all the specific and generic goals of the process areas assigned to maturity levels 2 and 3.

At maturity level 3, processes are well characterized and understood, and are described in standards, procedures, tools, and methods.

A critical distinction between maturity level 2 and maturity level 3 is the scope of standards, process descriptions, and procedures. At maturity level 2, the standards, process descriptions, and procedures may be quite different in each specific instance of the process (for example, on a particular project). At maturity level 3, the standards, process descriptions, and procedures for a project are tailored from the organization's set of standard processes to suit a particular project or organizational unit. The organization's set of standard processes includes the processes addressed at maturity level 2 and maturity level 3. As a result, the processes that are performed across the organization are consistent except for the differences allowed by the tailoring guidelines.

Another critical distinction is that at maturity level 3, processes are typically described in more detail and more rigorously than at maturity level 2. At maturity level 3, processes are managed more proactively using an understanding of the interrelationships of the process activities and detailed measures of the process, its work products, and its services.

Maturity Level 4 - Quantitatively Managed

At maturity level 4, an organization has achieved all the specific goals of the process areas assigned to maturity levels 2, 3, and 4 and the generic goals assigned to maturity levels 2 and 3.

At maturity level 4 Subprocesses are selected that significantly contribute to overall process performance. These selected subprocesses are controlled using statistical and other quantitative techniques.

Quantitative objectives for quality and process performance are established and used as criteria in managing processes. Quantitative objectives are based on the needs of the customer, end users, organization, and process implementers. Quality and process performance are understood in statistical terms and are managed throughout the life of the processes.

For these processes, detailed measures of process performance are collected and statistically analyzed. Special causes of process variation are identified and, where appropriate, the sources of special causes are corrected to prevent future occurrences.

Quality and process performance measures are incorporated into the organization.s measurement repository to support fact-based decision making in the future.

A critical distinction between maturity level 3 and maturity level 4 is the predictability of process performance. At maturity level 4, the performance of processes is controlled using statistical and other quantitative techniques, and is quantitatively predictable. At maturity level 3, processes are only qualitatively predictable.

Maturity Level 5 - Optimizing

At maturity level 5, an organization has achieved all the specific goals of the process areas assigned to maturity levels 2, 3, 4, and 5 and the generic goals assigned to maturity levels 2 and 3.

Processes are continually improved based on a quantitative understanding of the common causes of variation inherent in processes.

Maturity level 5 focuses on continually improving process performance through both incremental and innovative technological improvements.

Quantitative process-improvement objectives for the organization are established, continually revised to reflect changing business objectives, and used as criteria in managing process improvement.

The effects of deployed process improvements are measured and evaluated against the quantitative process-improvement objectives. Both the defined processes and the organization's set of standard processes are targets of measurable improvement activities.

Optimizing processes that are agile and innovative depends on the participation of an empowered workforce aligned with the business values and objectives of the organization. The organization's ability to rapidly respond to changes and opportunities is enhanced by finding ways to accelerate and share learning. Improvement of the processes is inherently part of everybody's role, resulting in a cycle of continual improvement.

A critical distinction between maturity level 4 and maturity level 5 is the type of process variation addressed. At maturity level 4, processes are concerned with addressing special causes of process variation and providing statistical predictability of the results. Though processes may produce predictable results, the results may be insufficient to achieve the established objectives. At maturity level 5, processes are concerned with addressing common causes of process variation and changing the process (that is, shifting the mean of the process performance) to improve process performance (while maintaining statistical predictability) to achieve the established quantitative process-improvement objectives.

4)

The terms Verification and Validation are commonly used in software engineering to mean two different types of analysis. The usual definitions are:

• Validation: Are we building the right system?
• Verification: Are we building the system right?

validation is concerned with checking that the system will meet the customer’s actual needs, while verification is concerned with whether the system is well-engineered, error-free, and so on. Verification will help to determine whether the software is of high quality, but it will not ensure that the system is useful.

Verification	Validation
Are we building the system right?	Are we building the right system?
Verification is the process of evaluating products of a development phase to find out whether they meet the specified requirements.	Validation is the process of evaluating software at the end of the development process to determine whether software meets the customer expectations and requirements.
The objective of Verification is to make sure that the product being develop is as per the requirements and design specifications.	The objective of Validation is to make sure that the product actually meet up the user’s requirements, and check whether the specifications were correct in the first place.
Following activities are involved in Verification: Reviews, Meetings and Inspections.	Following activities are involved in Validation: Testing like black box testing, white box testing, gray box testing etc.
Verification is carried out by QA team to check whether implementation software is as per specification document or not.	Validation is carried out by testing team.
Execution of code is not comes under Verification.	Execution of code is comes under Validation.
Verification process explains whether the outputs are according to inputs or not.	Validation process describes whether the software is accepted by the user or not.
Following items are evaluated during Verification: Plans, Requirement Specifications, Design Specifications, Code, Test Cases etc,	Following item is evaluated during Validation: Actual product or Software under test.
Verification is carried out before the Validation.	Validation activity is carried out just after the Verification.
Cost of errors caught in Verification is less than errors found in Validation.	Cost of errors caught in Validation is more than errors found in Verification.
It is basically manually checking the of documents and files like requirement specifications etc.	It is basically checking of developed program based on the requirement specifications documents & files.